Donating frozen embryo to research - Shady Grove

[Anonymous]

My husband and I had 3 beautiful kids thru IVF and we still have some frozen embryo that we would like to donate to research. Anyone know how does the process work? They are currently with Shady Grove. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

You just sign them over. Shady Grove will handle it.

[Anonymous]

SGF doesnt do the research I am guessing that you are looking for. It can be very difficult to find a place that takes embryos for research. I believe SGF might do something for training purposes—all ethically.

[Anonymous]

They will likely be destroyed. When I had a leftover embryo they said they weren’t taking any for research (they probably already had too many). So I chose to implant it and of course it took.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They will likely be destroyed. When I had a leftover embryo they said they weren’t taking any for research (they probably already had too many). So I chose to implant it and of course it took.

Did you do it during the time that you “couldn’t” get pregnant?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They will likely be destroyed. When I had a leftover embryo they said they weren’t taking any for research (they probably already had too many). So I chose to implant it and of course it took.

Did you do it during the time that you “couldn’t” get pregnant?

No. SGF doesn’t do compassionate transfers. It was more of a “well, let’s see!” kinda thing. Kid is now 3 months and a total delight.

[Anonymous]

An RN shamed me for donating. I just didn’t want to refreeze my unfrozen embryos left over. Just though that was a lot of fresh frozen fresh frozen going on…

[Anonymous]

OP- I reached out Shady Grove so many times to talk to someone and they haven't return my calls or emails.

[Anonymous]

I am starting the process with SGF right now and on the form where you consent to IVF you have to check what you want them to do with any unused frozen embryos when you're completely done (options were donate, thaw/destroy, or thaw/use for quality control training/destroy). If you have a partner they have to mark the same choice to proceed.

[Anonymous]

Tell them you don’t want to pay for storage anymore and they will hound you with phone calls to donate your embryos. I found it intrusive and insensitive since deciding what to do with our embryos was a difficult choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They will likely be destroyed. When I had a leftover embryo they said they weren’t taking any for research (they probably already had too many). So I chose to implant it and of course it took.

were you otherwise planning to have more kids? is there a religious reason why it's okay to use them for research but not to destroy them?

[Anonymous]

Have you considered donating them to give another potential parent the opportunity to conceive?

[Anonymous]

Former stem cell researcher, they'll be destroyed on research too FYI. Same outcome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:An RN shamed me for donating. I just didn’t want to refreeze my unfrozen embryos left over. Just though that was a lot of fresh frozen fresh frozen going on…

What? Why?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They will likely be destroyed. When I had a leftover embryo they said they weren’t taking any for research (they probably already had too many). So I chose to implant it and of course it took.

were you otherwise planning to have more kids? is there a religious reason why it's okay to use them for research but not to destroy them?

I was, but I probably would have thought harder about the timing if I thought the transfer would work. But like I said, kid is here and we can’t imagine our family without him.

We are Catholic and we went in not knowing what we would do if we ended up with too many embryos. We felt ok donating to research even though that results in destruction of the embryo, at least it is a useful purpose. We did not feel ok about outright discarding.